In 1972, Marie-Helene de Rothschild threw a surrealist dinner party at the family’s mansion in the suburbs of Paris. Dali was there of course, and Audrey Hepburn showed up with her head trapped inside a Magritte birdcage. It’s a night people still talk about more than 40 years later; up there with Studio 54’s legendary New Year parties…

The story of Freetown Christiania does, in some ways, seem like a fairy tale… a druggy, twisted, modern-day fairy tale at that, but a fairy tale nonetheless. (c) Apolasos Upon entering Christiania, Denmark, situated right in the heart of Copenhagen, a carved sign reads: You Are Now Leaving the European Union. Free town Christiania is a…

Might I recommend taking one of the Worst Tours Portugal has to offer? No seriously. That is what an actual tour guide company in the city of Porto named themselves– The Worst Tours. For travellers who only want to see the picture-perfect side of a city that’s fully catered to tourists, then yes, this is probably the worst possible…

Remember that Kevin Costner movie from the 90s, Waterworld, ‘the most expensive film ever made’, that everyone hated? Well it’s kinda one of my favourite movies (ever). And when I stumbled upon these wild photographs by Tod Seelie, needless to say I got pretty excited. A real-life waterworld, just like the floating islands and make-shift sea…

When it opened its doors in 1955, the Grande Hotel in Beira, colonial Mozambique was touted as the largest and most luxurious hotel in Africa. The art deco style palace with uninterrupted views of the Indian Ocean boasted 116 rooms and an Olympic sized swimming pool for its VIP guests. But by the 1970s, having…

Featured in this week’s Homeland. It was built for stockbrokers and bankers in their thousand dollar suits to make million dollar deals, but for nearly two decades it has held the less impressive title of the world’s tallest squat. Welcome to the Centro Financiero Confinanzas, more commonly known as the Torre David (the Tower of David) in…

I pass the Pont Louis Philippe most days, whizzing by on a scooter along the banks of the Seine. At the foot of the last arch on the right bank, there is a door that has been mystifying me for a while now, because it appears that someone lives there… On the most recent occasion…

It was the most densely populated place on Earth for most of the 20th century, where a room cost the equivalent of US$6 per month in high rise buildings that belonged to no country. In this urban enclave, “a historical accident”, law had no place. Drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes lived and worked alongside kindergartens,…

It was once known as the “Paris of the West”, the birthplace of the middle class, one of the fastest growing cities in the world, an industrial utopia. The Detroit we know today is an American city so broke that last year half of the street lights in the city’s sparsely populated communities were…